Degree Plan – BS Math Major at Excelsior

[NAP]

Hi Alissa!

Thank you for your stamp of approval. It means a lot to me.

I have had tons of experience and help creating degree plans. It has been hard for me though to get used to the flexibility that Excelsior offers compared to traditional degree programs. It has also seemed just too good to be true.

I have made several changes to my plan recently and decided to allow myself to take the exams that interest me the most (languages and astronomy) instead of filling in with them later if I need them. I have never heard the word polyglot before, but apparently I am aspiring to be one. Thanks for the link; I’ll check it out. I have always wanted to learn at least 5 different languages. I wish they offered Italian and a few others in CLEP. I have taken college level Spanish already so I know I can learn it – a little bit every day over a long period of time.

A&I Lit is a great idea. I’ll keep that and a few others of the forum’s favorite exams in my back pocket for future use. Since your post, I’ve thought of a few other options which I will post later.

I would love to go to college! In high school, I would have loved the idea of starting college through CLEP. At 18, I would have loved to attend college and live on campus. My plans for college have not worked out as I had hoped. Now, I’m happy to get my education through exams and have the opportunity to go on to grad school.

Getting major credit for minimal cost (and saving the money to use toward grad school) was the 1st big draw of the GREs. The more I look at all of my testing options the more I realize these are the subjects I most want to learn about. That is a good point; I hope the GREs I want to take will still be available when I’m ready. If not, I’ll have to regroup when the time comes and maybe I can take a different GRE. Another thing I see is that with the same 1 year time frame I could lock in 3 credits each month through CLEP/DANTES. Studying for a year for a GRE and hoping to get the whole 30 credits is a risk by comparison.

That is true that requirements do change over time. The math major was just updated, so I hope it will stay the same for a while now. I will plan some extra time at the end of my studies to make adjustments for any requirement changes.

It is my understanding that a BS is the normal route for a Math or Science major compared to a BA. For instance, a university that I was looking at offers only BS degrees for all of the math, science, and computer related majors except for the math and science majors specifically. Those 2 also have a BA option for people who want to apply them toward humanities and social science areas and the BS option is for people who want to apply them toward math and science areas. Since I want to go on to Biostatistics and use it in the medical field, I assume that a BS would be the choice for me. As a math major, a BA kind of scares me with its added emphasis on arts. I’m surprised to learn that I’m not very far from one in my current plan.

I like how you worked ambitious, crazy, and exciting into your replies. That is how I feel about it most of the time. Sometimes it seems crazy, but other times I agree that it is an ambitious plan, and I am excited about it. I will need to keep my enthusiasm up, though and guard against burn-out. I expected to be doing this solo, so having the support of this forum has been an unexpected blessing. I also have a goal in mind which will help me to keep going, too.

Looking again at this new plan, if I include the time to study for the Biology and Chemistry CLEPs in the year of study for the Biochemistry GRE and do the same with the math exams for the Math GRE, this plan may not take as long as I estimated. We’ll see.

Your advice has been a great reminder for me that I need to stay flexible about time and course/exam planning as I go through this process. As I get more experience with this, I will be able to make adjustments according to how much time it actually takes me to study and which exams make sense to try.

Thanks so much for everything! That was wonderful of you to look up the Area of Focus info for me, too.

NAP